Ella Cheung

I really enjoyed looking through both of your tasks. The leaves, pebbles, walnuts, landscapes and fish painting shows you have sourced inspiration from a wide variety of nature. The blue and grey textured piece from enlarged stones is so interesting and has a lot of depth and it’s very realistic just like a photograph! You have portrayed texture really evidently throughout your work. My favorite piece is the kiwi fruit. The dark background looks amazing against the bright green and the fruits bounce off the page catching my attention.  The autumn leaves are fantastic as I can see that they look crunchy and three-dimensional and the use of collaging in your drawings is great. In your talking pattern task, The abstract style of your models are very interesting and adds a new perspective of autumn that I hadn’t thought of before. The colored silk poking out from the twigs is really original and I can see that being developed into a new series of print and sculpture ideas. As well as the abstract stone, the print is unique and matches the irregular shape of the rock which ties in with that abstract feeling.

To develop your work further, I would suggest drawing the kiwi fruit in different colours like yellow or pink and adding a layer of paint texture and also experiment with the fish paintings by maybe giving them a ‘scales’ or ’seaweed’ textured background like you did with the autumn leaves.

Overall, you have experimented with a broad range of mediums and that is something you can continue doing in future projects.

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For this task, I was working with a photo that I took of a Koi Fish in a river. Using the term ‘ways of seeing’, I wanted to completely take the Koi fish out of its natural environment that you would envision it to be in. I focused on the irregular patches on the scales and painted them in different colours while distorting them and playing around with the composition. I made colourful backgrounds digitally with lots of layering to bring the koi fish pattern outside of its body for a fun twist. I also tried to make a print capturing the movement of multiple koi fish swimming. The colours I used were directly taken from real-life koi fish and the vividness really symbolizes them well. I also used colours like pink and blue on some prints as an experiment as another way of seeing them. I really enjoyed this process of working from the shapes I saw inside the koi fish alone. The digital look is one of my favorites and it is so bright and bold with the layers of colourful patches being the main attraction and the thin outline of the koi fish body shows that print coming through in random places which is similar to what a real koi fish would look like but inverted.

To improve and develop, I would add some of the river ripples into some of my digital prints to add a further layer of texture and outlines.

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Through The Window

Every morning when I wake up I open the blinds and see my view. Two tall buildings overlapping each other from my perspective. The tallest building is currently halfway under construction. This block is mostly scaffolding so I thought I could portray the view I see in different styles and compositions. The difference in colours I use represents the mood I feel when I wake up. The pinks and bright palette show that it’s a sunny day and the mood is good. I used an abstract style for the playful and cheerful feeling to stand out.

Although through the eyes, the view remains the same, emotions within the mind can distort this vision and I tried showing this on paper. For the opposite feelings; sadness, boredom and isolation on a gloomy day, I used black and grey. The messy scribble technique is used to highlight feelings of detachment and blur. To add texture I used materials such as oil pastel.

Throughout drawing the building blocks opposite me I have learned that no matter what subject is placed in front of you, there is always something to observe and appreciate, it might be small but there are unlimited ways to interpret things that can be turned into art. To improve I would maybe try working on different coloured paper and experimenting on tissue paper.